


Imitation

by silver_etoile



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Future Fic, Not Season 3 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 15:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_etoile/pseuds/silver_etoile
Summary: After Lucas chose Riley, Maya bailed. But now she's back and she has to clean up the mess she left behind and figure out what she's doing with her life and how Riley and Lucas fit back in, if they do at all.





	Imitation

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not season 3 compliant (because I haven't actually watched it yet--let me live in denial a little longer, okay?) It took a whole year to get this out, so here it is!

Maya’s really too old to be doing this, hauling herself up a rickety fire escape, dropping her frayed back pack on the landing before crawling in the open window. The room she climbs into is empty, bed neatly made, pillows fluffed, and smelling faintly of vanilla perfume. Riley has been here.

Of course Riley has been here, it’s her room. Maya plops down in the bay window, taking a moment to herself. It’s been a while but nothing has changed. Riley’s stuffed animals are still piled in the exact same spot as always. Her bedspread is the same it’s been since they were kids. It’s like Maya never left.

She should go find Riley, see if she’s even home. It’s summer, but Riley could be taking summer classes or she could be working at the bakery. Maya doesn’t let herself be disappointed that she doesn’t even know those things. She’s done being sorry for being herself.

Still, it takes every ounce of effort to stand from the bay window and take a step towards the door. It swings open before she gets two steps, though, and Riley whirls in, shouting something behind her as she does.

“Auggie, for the last time, no one’s breaking into my room. It’s just the wi—” She stops short as she catches sight of Maya.

For a second, an agonizingly long second, neither move. Maya opens her mouth to say something, though she isn’t sure what. She’s spent the last six hours on the plane coming up with what to say in this moment.

_Hey Riley, I’m back._

_Hey Riley, you were right, Europe smells weird._

_Riley, long time no see._

_I fucked up, I’m sorry._

She doesn’t say any of that, her heart thudding a nervous rhythm against her ribcage. She doesn’t get the chance to as Riley throws her arms around her and squeezes her tight.

“Peaches!”

And nothing changes.

*

Maya bought a ticket to Paris with the money her mom had given her for graduation, money she’d been saving for a long time, money Maya was supposed to spend on college. She’d bought a ticket and left a week after graduation.

She’d always known that she wasn’t cut out for college, no matter how badly Riley wanted it to happen, for them both to magically get into NYU, share a dorm for four years, then move into some crappy apartment they could barely afford. 

The more Riley insisted, the less likely it seemed to happen.

So she’d left, hopped on a plane to Europe and figured out pretty quickly that she’d fucked up. Moving to another country was not as easy as TV made it look. There were visas and getting a job and finding a place to live, all of which were really fucking difficult when you didn’t speak the language.

Maybe she should have admitted defeat right then, but she hadn’t. She didn’t want to come back to Riley’s perfect world, to face her and Lucas after… well, after Lucas chose Riley. 

She was over it. Really. Two years away had done her good.

That doesn’t explain why she still feels some sort of deep ache as Riley smiles at her from across the cafe table.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back?” Riley asks, taking a sip of her coffee-less frappuccino. The day is hot, humid in a way that Maya has forgotten about after being in Europe so long, moving from place to place when her visas would run out and she didn’t have a job that would extend it. She’d been in Ireland last, enjoying the slow-moving pace of the country, trying to pretend she didn’t have to come back, pretending she wasn’t out of money, and out of time.

“It was just a spur of the moment thing,” she says because it wasn’t. It was a slow drag, an impending misfortune that came from bumming around Europe too long, the real world encroaching on her hippie daydream.

“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Riley says, and she’s not saying what she really wants to, Maya knows. Neither of them are, not yet.

It’s okay, though, because Maya doesn’t want to talk about Lucas and how immature and stupid it was of her to run away, and maybe how stupid it was to come back.

Riley doesn’t look uncomfortable, sitting across from her, but it still feels weird. Maya doesn’t like it, but she can’t deny it’s mostly her fault. It isn’t like they don’t have phones in Europe. They have internet and skype and everything else. She owes Riley more than a brief text every few months or a Like on her Instagram to show she’s still paying attention.

The last picture she Liked was one of Riley and Farkle in Central Park feeding ducks. She and Riley used to do that together.

“How’s school?” Maya asks, gulping down her hot coffee, burning her tongue, but she doesn’t wince. It’s a lame question and she hates herself for asking. When did they become so boring?

“It’s good.” Riley shrugs. “I’m moving back to the dorms this weekend, actually. You could come see it! Classes start on Monday.”

Maya shakes her head. “No thanks. I’ve had enough school to last me a lifetime.”

“Isn’t that the point of school?” Riley smiles, and Maya does too, just for a second.

School has always been Riley’s thing. Maya would rather lay out in the park and sketch people passing, rather sit by the Seine in Paris and watch some guy play fetch with his dog, freeze her ass off in Prague in February and stare at the Victims of Communism monument until her heart starts to ache. She’d rather visit the Trevi Fountain at night in the pouring rain, orange lights glaring off the water, a crowd still gathered despite rain soaking their clothes. There were a million places she’d rather be than at school.

“Okay, I hate this.”

Riley says it first, catching Maya off-guard. She expected Riley to just go along with the awkwardness until it passed, if it ever did (could they ever be the same?).

“Hate what?” Maya says though she knows damn well what. Leaving hadn’t solved any problems, so she didn’t know what she’d expected coming back to do.

“This.” Riley gestures between them. “It’s all weird. I hate it.” She pauses. “You didn’t have to leave.”

“Yes, I did,” Maya says, but Riley cuts her off.

“No, you didn’t. You could have stayed and things would have been okay. I’m not the one who didn’t pick you.”

Shoving a hand in her hair, Maya looks away, out the window to where sweaty New Yorkers lope past, clothes clinging to their skin, mouths set grim, determined to get down the street. She’s forgotten how hard everyone has to be here.

She doesn’t have an answer that Riley will like. Riley knows the truth, that she couldn’t stand to see them together, that it hurt too much to try to be the supportive friend anymore. She could do it better from further away, somewhere she only got the highlights rather than the daily reel of kisses and hand-holding. Even now, the thought makes her stomach coil into a ball but she shoves it down. She didn’t come back so she could feel this again. She’s over Lucas and his stupid face and why he had to choose and ruin everything.

Maya isn’t going to apologize. It’s what Riley’s waiting for, an apology for leaving, for staying away for two years, for putting the blame on her, except Maya doesn’t. She doesn’t blame Riley for what happened.

“I’m here now,” she says instead because she’s too tired to fight, too jet-lagged to get into this right now. She’d known it would happen, of course. She isn’t stupid.

Riley frowns.

 _For how long?_

The unspoken question lingers, and Maya doesn’t have an answer to that either. She doesn’t have a plan this time, but has she ever? She’s twenty years old and she still has no idea where she’s going. Europe was supposed to help her figure that out, but that’s just something society tells you, that traveling is supposed to help you _find yourself_ but at this age, Maya only found out she can drink French boys under the table but can’t hold a candle to the Irish.

For a long moment, Riley spends her time wiping the condensation off her cup with a napkin, and Maya doesn’t say anything, though she really wants to break the silence, the unbearable tension that she has caused. It shouldn’t be like this.

“I was gonna go to a friends house tonight. She’s having a kind of pre-school party.”

“A party?” Maya remembers parties in high school which were less like those parties on TV and more like a few people raiding their parents’ liquor cabinet and getting drunk off peach schnapps. Riley always refused to drink then and always frowned when Maya did. She got too drunk once and tried to kiss Lucas. He’d gently pried her away, like he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, like he was embarrassed by it, by her. He’d never mentioned it afterwards, but Maya knew he remembered. She certainly did.

“Yeah. You could come if you--do you want to come?”

Maya could make up an excuse about spending the night with her mom, or she could even be cruel and say she has other plans with _other_ friends, whoever that might be. It’s not Riley’s fault, she reminds herself, watching the way Riley fidgets in her chair, almost like she’s nervous.

Riley’s grown up over the years, still tall as a tree, her long brown hair chopped to her shoulders for the first time that Maya can remember. She looks older, more mature than Maya remembers, like the past two years have been good to her. Not like Maya, who’s still grimy from the plane, hair pulled into a messy ponytail, makeup smudged from falling asleep halfway across the Atlantic. She probably looks like shit.

It’s her first night back in two years, and she hasn’t seen Riley in forever. Whatever awkwardness there is between them, it won’t go away if she stays away, so she forces herself to smile.

“I’d love to, Peaches.”

Riley’s expression softens at Maya’s answer. “Awesome. I’ll give you the address. It starts at ten.”

“It _starts_ at ten?” Maya teases, but she smiles for real this time as Riley texts her an address. The only way to fix things is to start, though she isn’t sure how much she wants to fix just yet. She’ll take it one step at a time.

*

Maya starts the party way before ten, drinking half a bottle of wine she finds in the fridge at home. It’s probably been there for months. Her mom opens one then forgets about it for months at a time, which is perfect for Maya because there’s no way she’s showing up to this party completely sober.

Riley told her the name of whoever was hosting, but Maya has already forgotten. The apartment door is open as a stranger buzzes her up and she slips in unnoticed. It’s the exact opposite of any party she’d ever expect Riley to go to, a typical college fare with cheap booze, thudding music, and too many bodies making the room feel claustrophobic. 

Maya hasn’t texted Riley to check if she’s here, but somehow she can’t picture Riley downing a glass of whatever cocktail is being passed around. It smells strong and fruity but tastes sharp and heavy when she takes one. The apartment is uptown, probably owned by some rich NYU student’s parents. The living room alone is bigger than Maya’s apartment. She tries not to be jealous of someone she doesn’t even know, Riley’s new friends. 

Riley finds her first, which isn’t that much of a surprise, though the drink in Riley’s hand is a bit of one. Maya remembers the graduation party where it took her, Farkle, _and_ Lucas to convince Riley to have one sip of wine. How things have changed, she thinks bitterly. Apparently all it took to get Riley to loosen up was for Maya to leave.

“Maya, you’re here!” Riley says, and she seems happier now, happier than a few hours ago when she’d only seemed disappointed in Maya. Maybe it’s the drink in her hand or maybe she has forgiven Maya that quickly. “Come meet my friends.”

Maya grabs another drink from the tray that passes by as Riley drags her to a circle of girls. Maya isn’t sure why she came here. Because Riley asked, her subconscious reminds her, and she could never say no to Riley.

The girls Riley introduces her to blur together, blonde, brunette, pink-haired girls who wear too much jewelry and smile at Maya like, any friend of Riley’s is a friend of theirs, like Maya wasn’t there first, hasn’t been Riley’s best friend since kindergarten. The alcohol in Maya’s stomach sloshes together and she feels kind of sick as one girl—Sara? Serena? Sierra?—gushes about how sweet Riley is and how she’s such a great friend.

“Is there a bathroom somewhere?” she interrupts the girl.

“Just down that hall,” the girl says, pointing the way.

“Thanks.” Maya shoves her unfinished drink at the girl and ignores the way Riley’s shoulders drop, the purse of her lips like Maya’s not even trying.

Maya pushes her way through the crowd, her head swimming, and she stumbles in the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Leaning against it, she sighs, closing her eyes for a moment. She can’t do this. She can’t pretend that everything is okay, that everything is the same as when she left. She’s not the same. Riley’s not the same.

She should never have left, or she should never have come back.

Turning to the sink, Maya splashes some cool water on her face and takes a breath. Maybe she’d done all this too fast. She should have waited a day, gotten rid of the jetlag, really thought it through, but thinking things through has never been Maya’s strong suit.

She doesn’t know what she would have done differently anyway. She’s back in New York for the time, and she can’t just ignore Riley. She has to fix what she’s broken.

Maya gives herself another minute to quell the slosh in her stomach and convince herself that everything is going to be fine. They are going to fix this.

She flushes the toilet for good measure before yanking open the door and running into the person standing there.

“Sor—” Her voice dies as her gaze travels from the ground up to Lucas’ blond hair and cool blue eyes staring straight at her.

“Maya,” he says, sounding confused, surprised, questioning.

Maya’s heart thuds into the pit in her stomach as she stares right back. Of course he’s here. Why wouldn’t be be here? Riley’s here. Fuck, she _really_ didn’t think this through.

Instead of replying, she pushes past him, eyes darting around, looking for an escape, a balcony, a door, anything. Maybe she really is going to be sick this time as Lucas’ hand reaches for her arm and she yanks it out of his grip, whirling around.

“Don’t.”

He tilts his head to the side, like he’s still confused. Maya doesn’t know how he could be.

“Maya, what are you—what are you doing here?”

“Leaving,” she says sharply, searching for the front door, but the room sways in front of her and she isn’t sure which it is.

“I thought you were in London or something,” he says, and it’s a stupid thing to say. It doesn’t matter where she was. He doesn’t care.

“Ireland,” she corrects him anyway, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

It’s been two years, but her heart still beats faster, pulse racing now between the nerves and the alcohol. It shouldn’t. She hates that it does as Lucas stands in front of her. He looks the same but different, more filled out, more grown up, less like the cowboy he used to be.

He shifts his weight, glancing around, probably looking for Riley to save him here. It makes Maya angry, that he doesn’t even want to be alone with her.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he says finally and she scoffs, chewing on her bottom lip to stop herself from doing something she’ll really regret.

“You don’t get to ask that,” she snaps. “You made your choice.”

“We said nothing was going to change,” he says, eyebrows up, expression open and trusting in a way that Maya hates, hates that he can just look like that and she feels bad, like it’s her fault he doesn’t understand.

“I was wrong,” she says, pressing her arms against her stomach, against the churning going on there. She hasn’t had enough to drink to have this conversation, not yet. “I was stupid. But it doesn’t matter now because you’re with Riley. That was what you chose.”

“Maya—”

“No, don’t,” she interrupts him with a huff. “I don’t want to hear you apologize. I didn’t come back for that. I didn’t come back for you. I’m only here until I figure out where I’m going. Don’t get any ideas, Huckleberry; I’m not here to patch up our friendship and pretend things are all roses and puppies because we both know things can’t go back, and I don’t want them to. Some things are better left behind us.”

Lucas stares, eyebrows knitted together now, but Maya won’t let him get to her, not the way he used to. He used to just smile at her and she would melt. He used to be such a constant in her life, almost as much as Riley, but he isn’t anymore, and she can’t stand to go back.

“I’m so fucking jetlagged,” she says when he doesn’t reply. It hurts more than she expected that he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t argue. She should be glad. “I have to get home.”

She doesn’t find Riley to say goodbye, only slips out the front door and drags herself down the stairs. The heat outside does nothing for the nausea in her stomach as she steps out. She doesn’t know why she came back when things are just as messed up as when she left. She has no idea why.

*

“So you’re back.”

Maya tosses aside the video game controller and turns to Farkle where he sits at his desk chair. The semester hasn’t even officially started yet, but it’s piled full of books on math and science and other things Maya isn’t smart enough to understand.

“Temporarily,” she says, tossing her hair back and flashing him a smile.

She sits on his bed, across from his dormmate’s bed, which is currently empty. For an Ivy League dorm, it’s a little sparse with two beds crammed together, two desks wedged against the wall, a nook that can’t really be considered a closet.

“How long is temporarily?” Farkle asks, swiveling his chair to face her.

Maya shrugs. She doesn’t have any plans. Her mom is just glad to see her. “Until I find somewhere else to go.”

Farkle pauses but he doesn’t say that she doesn’t have to go. After all these years, he’s finally learned when to keep his mouth shut.

“So have you seen them yet?”

Maya flops on the bed; it’s hard and uncomfortable. The ceiling has water damage in the corner, plaster yellowed and drooping.

“Is that really what you want to ask me about, Farkle? I went to Rome. I saw the Sistine Chapel. I was escorted out for taking a picture. I saw the Statue of David, Farkle, and you want to know if I’ve seen Riley and Lucas?”

“Rome’s a long ways away,” he points out.

She sighs. She should have known there was no one in this goddamn city who didn’t care about their stupid little love triangle. It’s not even a triangle anymore. Maya’s out of the equation, has been for years.

“Yes, I saw them. Happy?”

He doesn’t look happy, doing that thing with his mouth where only one side twists like he’s trying to think of the right thing to say.

“How was it?”

“Awkward.” She pauses for a moment, staring at the water stain, so like her own ceiling. “They hate me, don’t they?”

“They miss you.”

She shakes her head and huffs away the feelings welling in her chest, the weight settling there. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I get it,” Farkle says, and Maya thinks she should have come to see him first. “You were hurt. It felt like your friends picked each other over you.”

She rolls onto her side and gazes at him. “How do you know that?”

“It’s how I felt when I realized neither you or Riley would really like me back the way I wanted you to.” He shrugs before Maya can say anything. “It was a really long time ago, and I’m kind of glad it happened. Otherwise, I would have been in the same situation. I’m happier that I’m still friends with both of you.”

“Too bad it didn’t work out that way this time.”

“We all knew it was coming,” he says, and Maya frowns but doesn’t disagree.

She should have known. She had known, she’d just pretended not to. They couldn’t go on forever, not after four years of high school, forced friendship and pushing away feelings. She’d dated other guys. She’d had to, to convince herself she could move on. 

“So you’re not mad I left?” she asks finally and Farkle shakes his head.

“I think you needed it. I think we all needed a break.”

“Two years is a long break.” She’s not sure it was long enough.

“You know what they say: time heals all wounds.”

Maya scoffs. “Well, _they_ are full of crap.”

Farkle smiles. “I missed you, Maya.”

Maya glances over at him and returns the smile, genuine for once. “I missed you too.”

*

Mya has spent her whole life in New York City. She knows every subway stop, which busses to avoid at night, which store front once sold rainbow bagels, then giant cupcakes, then melted bitter dark chocolate disguised as milk. Up until high school, she felt like she belonged here, like she fit in just right. But now, now everything feels different.

She feels like she’s seeing New York through a different lens now as she wanders down the crumbling sidewalks, past honking cars and dozens of yellow taxis. It’s not _her_ New York anymore the way it used to be.

In Europe, she’d spent a lot of time feeling out of place, like she didn’t quite belong in certain places. But it had been simple to fall into Europe’s easy atmosphere, to wander down the narrow, cobblestone streets, to get directions through mostly gestures and exchanges of two languages, to recognize the friendliness of a smile from a stranger. 

It doesn’t help that she doesn’t have anything to come home to. Things aren’t the same as they used to be, and they never will be again.

“If you’re going to be home for a while, maybe you should think about getting a job,” Maya’s mom says after over a week of Maya lying around the apartment, her bags still half-packed, her room scattered with art supplies and unfinished sketches and paintings. Everything feels so impermanent.

It sounds so ridiculous, so _normal_ , that Maya laughs. She laughs even harder when her mom suggests helping out at the bakery. There’s no fucking way she’s working there again. That’s one surefire way to see Lucas every day.

A job might not be a terrible idea, though, seeing as how Maya has no money and it beats sitting around by herself all day. If this was two years ago, she would have been spending her time with Riley or Farkle or even Lucas, but they’re all in college now with new friends, and Maya feels somehow even more left out than before.

So she goes down to the nearest Starbucks and fills out an application. No real New Yorker would be caught dead in a Starbucks, so she figures the odds of anyone she knows seeing her there are relatively slim.

“So what do you do?” Katya, a girl with a ring through her nose and bright turquoise hair, asks Maya after she shows her how to use the cappuccino maker.

“Do?” Maya repeats, retying her apron strings that just seem to end up in a jumbled knot no matter how hard she tries. Riley could always tie a perfect bow.

“You know,” Katya says with an unconcerned shrug. “Go to school, play an instrument on the corner for change, trying to be an actor.”

“None of the above,” Maya says, giving up on the apron. “I’m just here until I figure out what to do next.”

Maya didn’t exactly have a plan when she came back. Then again, she didn’t have a plan when she left either. She’s hoping it will come to her, some magical solution of what she’s supposed to do next, where she’s supposed to go.

She’d told herself, all those years ago, that she’d left to find herself, to figure out what she wanted. Her problems had simply followed her, though, to Paris, to London, to Rome. She isn’t sure she’s figured anything out except that distance doesn’t solve anything. 

Katya tilts her head to the side and quirks an eyebrow. “So what do you do?”

Maya pauses. “I’m an artist.” It’s a simple explanation for the fact that she hasn’t actually sold any art in her life.

“Yeah?” Katya asks, and she actually looks interested. “What kind?”

“Mostly abstract paintings, sketches. Nothing I can actually make money off of.”

“There’s plenty of ways to make money off art,” Katya says, but she doesn’t get to expand on that thought as the door opens and someone steps in.

Maya’s stomach sinks as she catches sight of the familiar sweep of blond hair and a square jaw she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since seventh grade.

“Shit,” she mutters, turning around sharply as Katya gives her a confused look. Why is he here? He doesn’t drink coffee, or he didn’t used to.

“You okay?” Katya asks, sounding more confused than concerned.

“Can you just deal with him?” Maya asks without turning around although she knows Lucas is probably standing right there, probably watching her, thinking of something to say that will make everything more awkward. “Please?”

“Sure,” Katya says slowly, turning to the counter. “What can I get you?”

“Maya?” Lucas says and Maya grimaces. This isn’t how she wants to see Lucas. In fact, she doesn’t want to see Lucas at all. It’s not as though she can hide, though, standing behind the counter.

It takes all her willpower to turn around and glare at Lucas. “What are you doing here?” she asks coldly. This is supposed to be somewhere safe from people she knows. No one needs to know she’s debased herself enough to work at a global chain coffee shop.

“Coffee?” Lucas says, like he’s not sure that’s the right answer.

“You don’t like coffee,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. 

Lucas shrugs instead of shrinking under her glare. “Lots of things have changed.”

Maya scoffs at that. She doubts much has changed in the grand scheme of things where Lucas is concerned. He still picked Riley. He still made that choice, and he can’t take that back. They can’t ever go back.

“Not enough,” she says instead, turning to Katya. “I’m gonna get more milk from the back.”

She can’t get out of there fast enough to miss Lucas calling after her, but once the door shuts behind her, she lets out a shaky breath.

Seeing Lucas brings back all the memories she has tried to get rid of in the past two years. At least at the party, she’d been drunk enough to handle it, but now, in the sober light of Starbucks, she isn’t sure she can.

She stays in the back, tidying up uselessly until Katya pokes her head through the door.

“He’s gone,” she says, letting the door swing shut as she comes in. She watches Maya rearrange the boxes of straws. “An ex?”

“Not exactly,” Maya mutters, sighing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have left you out there.”

Katya shrugs. “No big deal, though for future reference, if you really hate a customer, it’s better just to hideously misspell their name. Corporate won’t get so mad.”

Maya allows herself to smile, briefly. “Thanks for the tip.”

Katya nods. “Now, I’m gonna show you why we all hate making frappuccinos so much.”

Maya follows her back out to the front, glad to see that Lucas really is gone. She can’t hide forever, though, and she gets the feeling he’ll be back.

*

“This is tiny.”

Riley’s dorm is even smaller than Farkle’s, with two twin beds stuffed inside and a window that can only be described as minuscule.

“It’s a dorm in New York City,” Riley says, sitting on what must be her bed. Maya should have known from the purple and white flowered bedspread. The other bedspread in the room is covered in giant butterflies. Not exactly Riley’s style.

“Why don’t you just live at home?” Maya asks, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. There really isn’t anywhere to sit except for the bed and an uncomfortable-looking desk chair.

“Just wanted to be on my own a little,” Riley says, and even she looks slightly awkward despite the fact that this is _her_ room. “Plus it’s nice not to have my dad constantly watching over me.”

Seven years of Mr. Matthews as a teacher had been plenty, Maya has to admit.

Maya glances around at the walls tacked with posters. Some she recognizes from Riley’s old room. Others are new, maybe not even Riley’s. A part of her feels like she shouldn’t be here, like she doesn’t belong. It’s a strange feeling to have around Riley.

“So,” Riley says, looking around too as if trying to find a topic to fix the awkwardness. Maya isn’t sure there is one. “Tell me about Europe,” she says at last. “Is it amazing?”

Europe. Maya can talk about that. She takes the hard desk chair in the corner, sitting sideways to face Riley.

“Yeah, it is,” she agrees. “I went to this really awesome bone church in the Czech Republic.”

“A bone church?” Riley repeats, making a concerned face.

“It’s a church and inside, the walls are made up of skeletons they dug up. Sixty thousand plague victims. They even used bones to make up a chandelier and a coat of arms of the family who built the church.”

“Sounds creepy,” Riley says with a shudder.

“It was really cool,” Maya assures her. She remembers the train ride out of Prague, the anxiety as towns passed and she wasn’t sure which was her stop, the freezing cold air of winter as she’d stepped onto the platform and headed towards town. The church had been partially underground, down stairs and in a darkened room lit by sconces and a few windows. Thousands of skulls lined the walls, buried behind barred windows.

Maya doesn’t have a fascination with death, but a church full of bones is pretty intriguing. 

“It’s a kind of art you really can’t get away with otherwise.”

“Dead people art,” Riley says, and Maya smiles slightly.

“There was lots of other normal art. I went to the Louvre in Paris and the Musee des Beaux Arts. I got to see Van Gogh’s house. I went to the British Museum in London, the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I saw tons of fountains. Europe has some of the most beautiful fountains.” 

“Sounds great,” Riley says, nodding at her pillow.

“It is. You should go.”

“ _We_ should have gone,” Riley says, and she’s watching Maya in that way that makes Maya feel both guilty and annoyed that she feels guilty.

It’s not her fault everything happened the way it did.

A jiggle at the door saves her from having to reply—she’s not sure it would have been a good thing. The door opens and one of the girls from the party comes in. Sara? Serena? Maya can’t remember.

“Hey, Riles,” the girl says, dumping her bag on the other bed.

“Hi,” Riley greets her.

“My Psych class ended early. You wanna get ice cream?”

Ice cream used to be their thing, Maya thinks as a flare of jealousy rises in her.

Riley hesitates, glancing at Maya. “Sure. Maya, you wanna come with me and Sierra?”

Sierra. Not that it matters what her name is. It just gives Maya a name to despise in the moment. Riley has new friends. She doesn’t need Maya anymore.

“Actually, I was supposed to pick up dinner for my mom and me,” she says, rising from the chair and grabbing her purse from the floor. It doesn’t matter that her mom is out on a date tonight and probably won’t be home for hours. “So I can’t.”

Riley’s shoulders slump in disappointment, but more than that, she frowns like Maya is somehow disappointing her. Maya doesn’t like the curl in her stomach at that thought, that Maya is disappointing Riley by bailing. It actually makes her a little angry, that she still has to live up to Riley’s unrealistic expectations for her.

“Have fun,” she says as she leaves. In the hallway, she pulls out her phone and scrolls to a name, pressing the call button.

It rings as she heads for the elevator, passing open doors filled with music spilling out, girls laughing, sunlight peeking through the tiny windows, an idyllic life she will never have.

The phone is finally answered as she stabs the elevator button.

“Please tell me you’re not in class right now,” she says as the elevator dings and the doors slide open.

*

“Should I even ask why we’re sitting in a park?” Farkle asks as they sit on a bench along the pathway, looking out at trees and grass, and a few joggers who try too hard, in Maya’s opinion.

“Because it’s a beautiful fall day,” Maya says, but honestly, she doesn’t want go home to the empty apartment, and she can’t hang out with Riley and her new best friend while they eat ice cream and talk about their lives and how great they are.

Maya is aware how petty that sounds, the jealousy over someone she doesn’t even know when she’s the one who left, who moved to Europe and met tons of people Riley doesn’t know. There was that guy she made out with in Dublin with the celtic tattoo on his wrist. He hadn’t been that cute, but Maya blames the accent. There’s the girl from Norway she met in Zagreb and they partied all night like they’d known each other forever. Maya doesn’t even remember her name.

It isn’t as if she has room to talk, to be jealous of Riley’s new life.

“How’s Isa liking Yale?” she asks because she knows Farkle is going to say something smart and insightful that she just doesn’t want to hear.

“She likes it,” he says simply. “She just went back last week. Too bad you missed her.”

Maya nods but she’s not listening, not really. Instead, she’s watching a couple strolling down the path on the opposite side of the park. They’re holding hands, looking disgustingly happy. Maya hates them.

Farkle sits in silence for a moment, rubbing his knees like he’s trying not to say what he’s thinking. Since she’s been gone, Farkle has changed more than she expected, losing the last vestiges of nerdiness he had clung to in high school. He looks a bit more hipster these days with plaid button downs, jeans that actually fit, and scuffed Converse. He’s come a long way from the kid Maya knew in middle school. 

He’s still too smart for his own good, though, which is probably why he fixes Maya with a look and says, “What are you going to do about Riley?”

Maya frowns, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She really needs to get it cut as it’s starting to look a little scraggly at the ends. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re back now,” Farkle says, leaning back on the bench and propping his foot up like he’s cooler than he is. “You can’t still act like you’re not.”

Maya doesn’t know what that means. “I haven’t been. I’ve seen her.”

“Seeing and talking aren’t the same thing.”

“I’ve talked to her,” Maya says, frowning at Farkle. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“You’ve said words to her,” Farkle says, like Maya is being difficult on purpose. “But you haven’t actually talked. I know you guys. If you had, we wouldn’t be sitting out here.”

“Why? You think I don’t like you as much as Riley?”

Farkle shrugs. “I know you’d choose her over me, or you used to.”

“Farkle—”

“No, no,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “I know we’re friends, but we’re not friends like you and Riley are, or were. And I know you’d rather be sitting here with her.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Maya says, and she wonders if all her friends think they play second fiddle to Riley.

“And why not?” Farkle asks simply. “She’s your best friend.”

“You didn’t see her just now, Farkle,” Maya says, slumping on the bench. Life had never used to be so exhausting. “She’s got new friends, a new life, and I’m still just the screw up who runs away when things get hard.”

“But you’re back now.”

“I’m back because I ran out of money,” she says with a huff. “Some ending.”

“I don’t believe that’s the only reason you came back,” he says, and Maya shakes her head. He always thinks there’s more to the story than there really is.

“It is,” she assures him. “I don’t need to be here to know she’s mad at me, that she’s disappointed in me. Why does she get to be disappointed anyway? She’s the one who changed everything.”

“Come on, you know that’s not true,” Farkle says firmly. 

“You’re right. It was Lucas,” she says. “He had to go and choose.”

“Did you really think he never would? That you three would just live in some weird non-sexual threesome forever?”

Maya shrugs, disgruntled. She’s just venting here. She knows she doesn’t have a right to be mad at Riley for any of this. Riley didn’t force Lucas to choose her. But she didn’t exactly fight it either. And now they’re probably living out their fantasy life without her.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I thought maybe we’d just get over it at some point, that I’d stop caring or something.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Stop being so smart,” she says, punching Farkle in the arm and he winces and rolls his eyes.

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Well, I don’t want help,” she says, crossing her arms. “I just want to complain. Will you just let me complain?”

Farkle smiles and nods. “Go right ahead.”

“Thank you.”

*

As much as Maya hates it, Farkle is right. She needs to fix things with Riley somehow, she just isn’t sure how. She’s been gone for so long and hasn’t made much of an effort to keep things the same. She isn’t sure what she thought might happen when she left except that it would get her away from what was sure to be a painful viewing of a relationship she’d been dreading since middle school.

Maybe it was immature. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone, but it was too late to take it back.

“Your favorite customer is back,” Katya says as Maya hands out a latte to the girl waiting.

She doesn’t even have to look to know it’s Lucas.

He really isn’t going to go away, is he? Resigned, she turns to the register where Lucas is waiting. She can’t pass this off on Katya forever, so she steps up and fixes her gaze on the keys.

“What can I get you?” she asks dully. She’d kind of hoped he would get the message that she doesn’t want anything to do with him, and stalking her at work isn’t going to change anything. He never has been one to take hints easily.

“Maya, can I just talk to you?” Lucas says instead of answering her question.

She knew it would be like this. If Lucas can’t take hints, he doesn’t give up either.

Looking up, she settles on frowning at his jaw. She doesn’t want to see the look in his eyes, whatever desperation is there to fix this, so he won’t feel as guilty. She’s not there to assuage his guilt.

“Look, I will be polite if you want to come into where I work. I will take your order and make your drink, but as far as I’m concerned, we have nothing to talk about.”

Lucas seems to tense, as though she’s said something he wasn’t expecting. “How are we supposed to fix this if you won’t talk to me?”

“There’s nothing to fix,” she says shortly, glancing behind Lucas at the line forming. “You’re holding up the line.”

She hadn’t come back so they could go on like they had before, pretending things were fine, pretending they were friends when actually they were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Lucas to make that choice. He had and he has to live with that, just like Maya does. They can’t pretend everything hadn’t changed when he did.

Lucas doesn’t immediately leave, standing there like he wants to say something else, like he can’t quite find the words. In the end, though, he doesn’t order anything and steps out of line, heading for the door.

“For not being an ex, you sure treat him like one,” Katya says once the rush is over and she wipes down the counters.

Maya doesn’t really want to talk about Lucas. She’s spent two years trying to forget about him, though it hadn’t been easy, and it obviously hadn’t worked the way she’d hoped.

She’d been so… in love? Enamoured? Obsessed? She isn’t even sure which is the right word for how she’d felt about Lucas. Somehow, she’d convinced herself they could be friends, and they had been, sort of, during high school. She pretended she didn’t see how he and Riley were drawn to each other, two peas in a pod.

She wonders now if the only reason she liked Lucas was because she had known it would never happen.

That doesn’t explain why it still hurts now, though. Why, deep down, she wishes he had picked her.

“Hopefully he won’t come back,” she says, grabbing a box to refill the straws. 

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Katya replies. “Guys like that always come back.”

“Guys like what?”

“The guilty ones.”

Maya pauses, glancing over at Katya. She’s wearing her turquoise hair back in a braid today, pink ribbon woven in to the ends.

“What makes you think he’s guilty?” He should be guilty in Maya’s opinion. He ruined everything.

Katya shakes her head. “I’ve had plenty of boyfriends cheat on me. The ones who feel bad always crawl back and beg for forgiveness, like it will absolve their stupidity or something.”

Maya isn’t sure what exactly Lucas feels bad about is the thing. Choosing Riley? Ruining their friendship? Not choosing her? She can’t let herself think that. The fact of the matter is that it’s over. It’s done, and Maya doesn’t want to relive it. He can go be happy with Riley and leave her out of it.

Besides, she has her own things to be guilty about, like what she did to Riley.

“But at least this one is cute, in that wholesome corn-fed kind of way,” Katya says off-handedly. “A little too clean-cut for my tastes, though.”

Maya never thought she’d go for that type either but that is really the least of her problems when it comes to Lucas.

“Maybe that’s why mine always cheat,” Katya goes on. “Too New York. Not enough country.”

“Lucas would never cheat,” Maya says because she knows that at least. Lucas is the most loyal guy she knows, and she hates it.

Katya glances sideways at her, a smirk at the corner of her mouth like she’s figured something out.

“He wouldn’t, would he?”

Maya frowns, shoving the box of straws under the counter. “I’m gonna change out the trash,” she says instead of answering.

“You do that,” Katya says, and Maya slips out from behind the counter. She’d rather deal with trash than with Lucas at the moment or with Katya’s suspicions.

*

“You know my mother owns a bakery?” Riley asks when Maya offers her a scone.

Behind them, the fountain shoots into the air and she can feel the mist wash over her in the light fall breeze. Fall has always been Maya’s favorite season in New York. After the heat of summer has gone but before the chill of winter sets in. When everything is golden and smells like cinnamon and pumpkin spice, whatever the hell that is exactly. She likes mulled cider and apple tarts. She likes sweaters and boots and wearing her hair down without sweating to death.

She gives the day-old scone to Riley anyway. “I do know that, Riles.”

Riley frowns down at it but doesn’t reply right away. 

The park is filled with people strolling down the pathways scattered with leaves. Students, parents, kids. A mixture of everything the city has to offer. They aren’t out here to enjoy the weather or the fountain. Maya’s not sure why they’re out here. It’s not going to be as easy as slipping through Riley’s window and pretending things are the same as always.

“What are you doing, Maya?” Riley asks finally, setting the scone aside.

Shoving her hair back, Maya sighs. “I don’t know,” she admits.

She doesn’t know what she wants anymore. A part of her wants to run back to Europe and get away from all these feelings she’s been having since she got back. Nothing is the same anymore, not even her and Riley, and that is the one thing she thought would never change.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” she says and she’s not sure if she wants to.

It sounds insane to say it. Riley has always been her best friend, the one person she could talk to about anything, her rock. But things are different now. _Maya_ is different.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have broken it.”

Maya was right. Riley does hate her for leaving.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back,” she says, shaking her head and pushing herself up, away from the edge of the fountain. Riley sighs behind her.

“So that’s it? You’re just gonna leave again?”

Maya turns to Riley’s hard expression, something unfamiliar that makes her stomach twist. “I don’t know what to do,” she says at length. “I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”

“I want you to stay,” Riley says, somewhere between anger and desperation. “I don’t want to feel like it’s my fault that you left.”

“It’s not your fault,” Maya says, the same frustration rising in her. She hasn’t done a good job of communicating that fact over the years, and she supposes running away didn’t help either.

“You act like it,” Riley says, eyebrows furrowing, and she stands up too. She’s much taller than Maya, and it’s only in this moment that Maya really notices. “I didn’t make Lucas do anything. I don’t understand why we had to stop being friends.”

“We didn’t stop being friends,” Maya interrupts, staring at Riley.

“It didn’t feel like that when you were gone,” Riley says plainly, eyes big, and the pit in Maya’s stomach grows bigger. “It felt like you were mad at me because Lucas chose me. You never called. You hardly even texted. What was I supposed to think?”

It’s the conversation Maya has been avoiding. It’s the reason she didn’t call, didn’t text. She’d known it would come sooner or later.

“I couldn’t deal with it, so I left.” She doesn’t know how to convince Riley it wasn’t because of her because deep down, she wonders if it wasn’t. Riley had barely questioned it when it came up, only spent a little time asking Maya what she thought, hadn’t considered the consequences of Lucas’ choice. Maya is the only one who really saw it for what it was.

“Why’d you come back then?”

Maya shrugs because she doesn’t really have an answer for that. She was broke. She was tired. Something told her it was time to come back, though at the moment, she’s wishing she’d figured out a way to stay. Maybe if she’d enrolled in college, gotten a student visa. Anything so she wouldn’t have to have this conversation with Riley in the middle of Washington Square Park with strangers milling past.

“Figured it was time to come home.”

Riley doesn’t say anything for a moment but shakes her head.

“You know I’m your best friend, Maya, but there are limits. I can’t just pretend everything’s okay. I needed you and you weren’t here.”

Maya feels guilty again, a gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach that she can’t shake, but it’s overridden with annoyance. Riley pretends like she doesn’t know exactly what she did to Maya all those years ago. “I needed you too, Riley, but you just—you just went off with Lucas like it was no big deal.”

“You _told_ me to!”

“I didn’t mean it!” Maya replies, the words bursting out of her, unexpected. She had, she had told Riley to go to Lucas, but somehow, she hadn’t expected it to happen, not so fast. There had been no consoling, no pathetic attempts to reassure Maya that things wouldn’t change, at least not until after she’d already left. Then came the texts promising. What a lie that had been.

Riley stares for a moment and another spray of water wafts between them. “Sorry I thought you were being sincere,” she says, frowning. “I thought my best friend would be honest with me.”

“And I thought you knew how much this would hurt.” Maya shakes her head, feeling the frustrating prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. Not now. She isn’t going to cry over this. “It hurt, Riley. He chose you and you chose him, and I had to sit by and watch. I couldn’t just stick around to watch you live out your fantasy and be the third wheel forever.”

“So you do blame me?” Riley says, but it’s more angry than hurt now.

Maya cringes. “No.” She presses her palms to her face. “I don’t know.”

This isn’t going how she’d imagined. Somehow, she’d imagined Riley just being her usual self and forgiving her, no questions asked. But everything is different. She doesn’t deserve to be forgiven just like that, but she isn’t going to ignore how Riley made her feel when she’d gone off with Lucas either.

“Why are you here then?” Riley asks, eyes wide, like she doesn’t quite know Maya anymore. “Why did you come back if you’re still mad? You should have just stayed in Europe.”

It hurts more than Maya expects, Riley’s sharp words. Like a knife to the gut as they stand in the warm afternoon sunlight, the rest of the world too cheery for this moment.

“I don’t want this to be us,” she says finally, sinking down on the edge of the fountain again. She feels inexplicably exhausted. “I don’t want us to be those girls who let a guy come between them. Lucas did this to us.”

“It’s not his fault,” Riley says, and oh yeah, Maya forgot for a second that they are dating. They’re together. Riley won’t agree with her on Lucas.

“Fine, we did it to us,” she says, though she still thinks it’s mostly Lucas’ fault. “But I don’t want to fight over a guy. Our friendship is more important.”

Maya is done feeling bad for what she did. She left. So what? She came back. If Riley can’t accept that, if they can’t move on, maybe they’ve just drifted apart too far. It happens. Most people don’t stay friends forever, at least not in the way they used to be.

Riley’s waiting for her to apologize. Maya knows it. She wants a real apology, not excuses.

Maya doesn’t think she needs to apologize, not in the way Riley wants it.

“I’m sorry I let everything fall apart between us,” she says because she is sorry for that at least. “I just couldn’t deal.”

She has no other explanation for what she did. It happened. It’s over. They have to move on.

Riley sits down next to her after a minute, hugging her arms like she’s cold. “I’m sorry too,” she says finally, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I should have been more sensitive. I was just so happy at the time, I didn’t really think what would happen after.”

Maya nods, scuffing the ground with her shoes. It never used to be this awkward. It was never awkward at all before. She doesn’t know what to say anymore.

“I wanted to think it would be perfect,” Riley goes on, frowning at the fountain behind them. “Me and Lucas. Together forever, like my parents.”

Maya doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to hear how great their relationship is.

“I don’t really want to talk about Lucas, okay?”

Riley moves her gaze to Maya, though, too serious. Maya feels her stomach drop again. They’re engaged, aren’t they? No, worse, they’re already married and they didn’t tell her. She isn’t which makes her feel worse: that they could be married or that she wasn’t asked to be the Maid of Honor.

Riley takes a breath, like she’s bracing herself to break this news. Maya’s heart pounds against her ribcage, nerves coiling deep inside her stomach, like a nest of snakes. After they’ve just maybe taken a step forward.

“Lucas and I—” _are engaged, got married, adopted a puppy, are moving to the suburbs!_ “—broke up.”

The breath Maya’s been holding rushes out as she processes what Riley said. “What?”

Riley nods, looking away. “Last year. It just, it just didn’t work. I don’t know. It was fine for a while, but—” She shrugs, and Maya doesn’t know what to say. Why hadn’t Riley just told her a year ago? She might have come home sooner. “He just wasn’t the one, I guess.”

As much as Maya feels some sort of rushing relief that it’s over, she’s not sure she believes that. Lucas and Riley were predestined or something, which is why he picked her in the first place. Written in the stars kind of destiny. The cowboy and the perfect girl. It was never the cowboy and the screw-up.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks as the moment sinks in. There is no Riley and Lucas.

Riley shrugs, her hands clasped around the edge of the concrete. “I guess I was too ashamed to admit that we’d gone through all of that just for it not to work.”

Maya doesn’t know what to say, so she puts her arm around Riley and rests her head on her shoulder. “The world works in mysterious ways.”

Riley actually smiles, leaning into Maya. “Did Europe make you wiser?”

“Not really,” Maya admits. “Just poorer.”

It’s not totally back to normal, and Maya doubts it ever will be like it used to, but maybe they’re moving forward, and she can get over this Lucas thing. Especially now that they’re not dating. She won’t have to see him with Riley, or at all if she has her way. Of course, she rarely does.

*

The light outside Maya’s window flashes red then off then red again, like it has for the past twenty years. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, amongst the rumpled comforter and lumpy pillow, Maya sketches the letters on her pad, focusing on the abstract glare of the red on the wall. Her colored pencils are scattered over her mattress and she reaches for the orange.

Her mother appears at the door, looking more dressed up than usual. Probably for yet another date. Maya wonders when she’s just going to give up on this whole guy thing. Maya has.

“All you do now is mope around and sketch,” she says, like it’s a surprise.

“I got a job.”

Maya doesn’t argue the rest. She hasn’t exactly made the most of coming home.

“Why don’t you go out with Lucas or something?” her mom says and Maya looks up sharply.

“I’ve told you we’re not friends anymore.”

Her mom sighs, leaning against the door frame and adjusting her necklace. “Then what about the other one? The one with the weird name?”

“Farkle,” Maya says, returning to her sketch. “He has school. They all have school.”

Everyone is in college except for her.

“Maybe you should enroll,” her mom says, coming over to the bed and sitting down next to her.

“And study what? Economics?” Maya isn’t interested in hearing the college speech again. Not that her mom was ever the one to really give it. Usually it was Mr. Matthews trying to drill it into her, as if college was the be-all, end-all.

“They have art schools,” her mom points out, and Maya snaps her sketchbook closed.

“Don’t you have a date?”

Her mom smooths down Maya’s hair like she used to do when she was younger.

“I’m just saying maybe you need to put yourself out there, honey. Make some new friends. Have some new experiences.”

“I went to Europe for two years.”

“And now you’re home. It’s time you acted like it.”

Maya rolls her eyes as her mom finally leaves. She’s one to talk about getting out there. She’s barely ever left New York City.

Sighing, Maya doesn’t open her book again. She bets Riley is holed up in her dorm studying or something. Farkle too probably. She doesn’t even want to think about what Lucas is doing. He’s at NYU with Riley, but he’s probably not studying right now.

She’s tried not to think of him since Riley broke the big news. It doesn’t make much of a difference except that she can now see Riley without fear of running into Lucas.

A part of her, though, a teeny, tiny part that’s always there, can’t help whispering in her ear: _there’s still a chance._ She hates it. There is no chance. There is no way. She’s never going to be friends with Lucas again. Not after that.

Maybe she does need new friends. New York has millions of people she could be friends with. Millions of people who have never heard of Lucas.

Groaning, she flops down on the bed. She needs to stop thinking about him. It’s almost as bad as before, except now when she thinks of him, it’s a clawing angry feeling in her stomach rather than the sickening butterflies that used to reside there.

Maybe her mom is right, she thinks with a grimace. She does need more friends. More friends who have nothing to do with Lucas.

*

“Why’d you move to Europe?” Katya asks between customer lulls as she leans against the back counter when they should probably be wiping down tables or picking up stray straw wrappers off the floor.

“Didn’t know what else to do,” Maya says because as much as she likes Katya, she’s not going to explain all of her problems. That would involve explaining Lucas, and Katya is suspicious enough.

“First world problems,” Katya comments, tightening her ponytail. She’d come in this morning with aqua blue hair instead of turquoise. Her nose ring had a little jewel on it today, dangling between her nostrils. Maya had considered a nose piercing for about a half a minute until Riley talked her out of it.

She’s surprised she made it all the way through Europe without getting a tattoo or something, just because she could. Riley always tried to talk her out of those kinds of things.

“Why are you working here anyway?” Maya asks as she watches Katya stretch. Katya seems way too cool to work at Starbucks.

“I’m getting my Masters in Art History,” she says. “And it is not cheap. Starbucks helps out.”

“What are you going to do with Art History?” Maya asks, and she doesn’t mean for it to come out so skeptical. Luckily, Katya laughs.

“Who the fuck knows. Hopefully work in a gallery or a museum or maybe an auction house. Or, you know, Starbucks forever.”

Starbucks forever sounds pretty depressing to Maya. Not that her prospects are any better at the moment. She’s twenty years old, still living at home, with no career to speak of and nothing on the horizon.

“Starbucks forever,” Maya repeats hollowly and Katya smiles.

“You’re young,” she assures her. “You’ve got time.”

It doesn’t feel like it to Maya, who’s sitting still while everyone else moves ahead.

“You like art, don’t you?” Katya asks as they listen to the CD that’s been on repeat since Maya started working there. “You said you were an artist.”

“Yeah,” Maya says, though she’s not sure how much of an artist she is when she can’t make money off it.

“There’s an art festival this weekend in Central Park I was gonna go to. You should come.” She says it so casually. So easily. Is that how you make friends when you’re not in preschool? Maya wouldn’t know. That was the last time she made any new ones aside from Lucas, and she doesn’t want think about him.

“Yeah, that’d be cool,” she says because she’s not going to turn down friends at this point.

“Cool. I’ll text you,” Katya says as the door opens and a customer steps in.

Perfect, Maya thinks as she puts the blender away. A new start.

*

“You didn’t tell me Riley and Lucas broke up.”

Farkle looks up from his textbook, and Maya should be insulted he’s studying instead of paying her his full attention, but she’s used to it by now. “Was I supposed to?”

“You are the second in command in all things Riley, Farkle!”

The dorm room door is open to the hallway and guys walk past without even a glance inside. Maya still hasn’t met Farkle’s roommate, though the bed is constantly mussed as though someone sleeps there.

Farkle doesn’t look guilty as he shrugs. “I just wasn’t sure how you’d take it. Figured she should be the one to tell you.

“I’m taking it fine,” Maya says, laying down on Farkle’s bed and combing a hand through her hair. Maybe she could get away with some color—pink or blue maybe.

“So you’re not mad at Lucas anymore?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Maya’s way of dealing with things is to just not think about them. Maybe not entirely healthy, but it’s worked so far. 

Farkle closes his textbook and Maya knows that’s not a good sign. “When are you going to forgive him?”

“Never.” Maya sighs and sits up. She was afraid of this. Just because Lucas and Riley are broken up doesn’t change what happened. “He never should have chosen. He should have just left it alone.” Across the room, Farkle shoots her a look. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”

“I think you’re still mad because you still like him.”

“That is ridiculous,” Maya says despite the swoop in her stomach. “You take that back right now!”

There is no way she could still like Lucas after everything that’s happened. For god’s sake, it’s been two years. She should be over it by now.

“Or what?” Farkle asks blandly, swinging around in his chair.

She glares. “Or I’ll hit you.”

He holds up his hands in defeat. “Okay, I take it back. But seriously—” he says and Maya grimaces. “You don’t think that might be the reason? You weren’t just a little happy to find out they broke up?”

“No. Not at all.” She shakes her head. Why would that make her happy? “I mean, a little, but only because I don’t think anyone should have dated anyone in the first place.” They could have avoided this whole mess in the first place if they’d kept their feelings to themselves.

“Not because you think maybe he made the wrong choice.”

Maya stares. “No! Riley is never the wrong choice.”

“Except when you wanted it to be you.”

“I did not,” she says, though deep down, she knows it’s true. It doesn’t matter now. “It’s over anyway. I don’t have to be friends with him or see him ever again. It’ll be like he never existed.”

“And you can just throw away your feelings like that?”

“I don’t have any feelings for him,” she says loftily, crossing her arms and ignoring the look Farkle gives her like he knows she’s lying.

“Except anger and jealousy and—”

“Stop it.” Frowning, Maya doesn’t meet Farkle’s gaze, looking out the window instead. There isn’t much to see this high up except shiny grey buildings. She doesn’t want to think about how she feels about Lucas. Nothing good can come of it.

“Maya,” Farkle says, but Maya doesn’t let him finish his thought, standing from the bed.

“I have to go meet some people,” she says, checking the time on her phone. She’s early, but she’d rather spend the time on the subway rather than here talking about Lucas.

“Okay,” Farkle says and doesn’t try to stop her from leaving. Out in the hall, Maya hesitates, looking back, but Farkle is already immersed in his textbook. Besides, it’s not his problem. It’s hers.

 

*

Maya is early as she waits by the southern gate, alternately checking her phone and keeping an eye out for Katya’s bright blue hair. The park already seems busier than usual with people heading in with a purpose today. Maya hadn’t done any research on this art thing, not even a Google search.

“Hey.” Katya appears before Maya as she checks her Instagram for the fifth time in five minutes. Riley has posted a picture of her and Sierra eating ice cream.

“Hi,” Maya says, tucking her phone away.

Katya’s got a whole group of people with her. Maya’s not sure how well she does in large groups.

“This is everybody,” she says, gesturing at the four people with her. “Everybody, this is Maya.”

There’s Nicholas, a skinny white guy with tattoos covering both arms, his ears gauged, and wearing a deep red beanie. Roman, a tall black guy, his head shaved, stands next to his girlfriend, Jade, a pretty girl with box braids and wearing a bright yellow crop top, and last is Zoe, a girl most similar to Maya’s height, so at least she isn’t the only short person there.

Maya is pretty sure she won’t remember all their names even as she repeats them to herself as they head into the park. 

“Are you an artist?” Jade asks as they head toward the middle of the park.

“Sort of,” Maya says. “You?”

“No, I can’t do art for shit,” Jade says with an easy smile. She’s holding on to Roman’s hand as they walk, and Maya looks away from it. “Everyone else is the artist. Zoe does webcomics. Nick’s a tattoo artist. And Roman, here, is a sell-out.”

“I am not a sell-out,” he says calmly beside her. “I do principal photography for TV.”

“He went corporate,” Katya said from behind them. “Not that I blame him. At least he gets paid for his art.”

Roman rolls his eyes like he’s used to the teasing.

In the center of the park, art spreads out like an octopus, the pathways lined with paintings, drawings, little booths selling jewelry and other handmade trinkets.

“You have really great skin,” Nicholas says as they wander down the pathway looking at paintings. “Color would show up really well on it.”

Maya glances at her arm with a shrug. “I don’t have any tattoos.” She pauses, glancing at him. “How’d you become a tattoo artist?”

“You mean in the grand scheme of things or what are the steps to becoming one?”

“Both?” Art has always seemed like a non-career unless she somehow became a famous painter who managed to sell enough to pay rent. As much as she loves it, she doesn’t have a plan.

“Well, I was one of those kids who never did anything in school. Always messing around. Spent more time drawing than listening. Never really thought I could make a career out of it, but I was working at a gas station when this guy caught me drawing one day, said I could be a great artist if I had the right medium. Turns out he owned a tattoo shop and he took me on as an apprentice. Best decision I ever made.”

“I can see that,” she says, nodding at his arms, and he laughs.

“They’re addictive.”

Maybe she’s been thinking about her art all wrong, she thinks as she continues down the row of paintings. She stops at one, an abstract piece filled with swipes of blue and red, almost like they’re fighting for control of the canvas.

“You into abstract?” Zoe steps up beside her. Katya and Nicholas are a few paintings away, arguing over the composition of one.

“Yeah,” Maya says. “It’s always been the easiest for me.”

“It’s hardest for me,” Zoe says, turning away and heading over to a booth selling silver jewelry. Maya follows, curious.

“You do webcomics someone said?”

“They don’t exactly pay the bills,” Zoe admits, picking up a necklace. “But I love doing them. I’m hoping someday they’ll get picked up by a major comic brand. When I was in school, I worked on some comics for Marvel. Maybe I’ll go corporate like Roman.” She laughs.

“You went to school?” Maya asks. She’s always been under the impression that art didn’t need school. It seems pointless to her to pay money to be told what to do.

“Parsons,” Zoe says, pulling her long brown hair into a ponytail and tying it up messily. “It really helped me figure out what I wanted to do.” She shrugs. “And what I could do.”

“You didn’t think it was a waste?”

Zoe smiles. “Trust me, my art is way better now. I don’t know if I can attribute that to school or just experience, but even if school didn’t make it better, it gave me the time to figure out what to do with it.” She holds up the necklace to Maya. “You should get this. It would look good on you.”

Maya puts it back as Zoe goes off to join Katya at the next booth.

“She’s right.”

Maya looks over at the voice next to her and what good mood she was in falls away as she finds Lucas standing there.

“The stalking thing?” she says as she steps back. “Not attractive.”

“Maya, wait,” he says as she looks around for Katya, someone she can escape to.

“What?” she asks sharply. She doesn’t want to talk to Lucas. She doesn’t want to deal with the feelings crawling all over each other, writhing in her stomach, threatening to spill out everywhere if she has to deal with him.

“I just want to talk to you,” he says, too sincere, sincere in the way that makes Maya hate him for being so damn nice.

“So you thought stalking was the way to go?” Maya asks because it’s easier to be mad than let herself feel whatever’s clawing at her throat.

“I live right over there, remember?” Lucas says, nodding behind her.

“Shouldn’t you be living in the dorms?” Maya asks, crossing her arms and wishing someone would come interrupt them, but Katya doesn’t even seem to notice, too busy talking to Nicholas and Zoe.

Lucas hesitates, nodding at the ground. “I, uh, moved back in after the divorce. My dad went back to Texas, so I’m just trying to help my mom get through it for now.”

Another thing nobody told Maya, she thinks. She won’t let herself feel bad for Lucas, though. That’s what he wants. For her to lower her guard.

She doesn’t say she’s sorry, shifting her weight instead, hoping this moment will end soon.

Lucas looks different now too, different than she remembers. He used to be the all-American, clean-cut kid who never did anything wrong except lose his temper once in a while. Now, he looks more like the hot guy on Instagram who knows which filters make him look best, not that he needs filters. He’s lost most of the boyish charm, growing into his looks, his hair a bit longer, less styled now, jaw still chiseled in the most annoying way. He’s still pretty, Maya hates to admit.

He’s lost the accent now too, after so many years in New York. No more honky-tonk cowboy. Maya can’t say she’s disappointed. It had always been a little much.

“I miss you, Maya,” he says, and it’s the worst thing he could say.

Maya almost smiles, in a self-deprecating kind of way. He can’t just say shit like that and expect her to forgive him.

“Well, you made your choice,” she says with a decisive shrug. As far as she’s concerned, that’s that.

Lucas frowns, seeming frustrated now as they stand in the middle of the art walk, people milling past without paying them any attention. Maya has no idea where Katya disappeared to, but she wishes he would reappear.

“You know Riley and I broke up,” he says. “You know that, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, shoving a stray piece of hair from her face. “It’s done. It happened. We’re done.”

“Just like that?” Lucas says, staring at her, and Maya looks away. She used to love it when he would look at her, like maybe she really had a chance, but those days are long gone.

“I don’t know what you expected to happen,” she says plainly. “You and Riley didn’t work out so now we’re just to supposed to forget about the whole thing? Go back to how it was before? We can’t go back, Lucas.”

“I don’t want to go back,” he says with a sigh. “I think I made a mistake.”

Maya’s stomach clenches and she shakes her head. “No. No, no, no, no. No. You don’t get to do this. I am not your second choice because things didn’t work out the first time. You’ve done enough damage, Friar.”

This can’t be happening. Not after all this time. Still, something, a rush of some emotion wells up in her chest even as she says it.

“That’s not what I—” Lucas tries to say, but Maya steps back sharply.

“I can’t do this,” she says, trying to take a deep breath around the lump blocking her throat. “I can’t—why’d you have to ruin everything? God, why did I have to like you? If you’d never moved here—if we’d never met—” She sighs. “I’m not going to be anybody’s back up plan.”

She leaves before Lucas can come up with a response, hurrying through the crowd, looking for Katya and her friends. Her heart pounds like she’s been running, her stomach churning like she’s going to be sick. She can’t go back to this, to the pining and the hurt when Lucas chose someone else.

Stupid Farkle, she thinks as she finally catches sight of Katya’s hair in the crowd. He put those thoughts in her head, that she wasn’t over Lucas, and goddamn it, he’d been right.

Lucas can still reduce her to a bumbling idiot in the span of a few words. His mere presence makes her nervous, like she’s not sure what she’ll do. Luckily, they haven’t been alone since she’s been back.

“There you are,” Katya says when she catches up to the group. “Thought maybe we’d lost you to the abstracts.”

“Just got distracted,” is all Maya says, though she can’t help glancing over her shoulder, checking for Lucas. To her relief, he isn’t there. It would be all to easy to give in to her feelings, but she hates to think what would happen then. What’s happened already has been bad enough. She doesn’t need to repeat the past.

*

It’s strange being back in the bakery after so long. It hasn’t changed at all, from the plush chairs to the baked goods behind the counter.

Maya sits in her usual spot, feet on the coffee table as Riley sets down a couple drinks and takes the chair next to her. She has missed this, the easiness of everything.

“How’s work?” Riley asks, and Maya smiles.

“How’s school?”

“Hard but fun,” Riley says. “Sierra’s friend’s sorority is having an ice cream social next weekend. You should come!”

Maya shakes her head. “I think I have to work.”

Things still aren’t quite back to normal between them. There’s some invisible barrier now that they have to climb over every time they see each other.

Riley is silent for a moment, contemplating her drink. At length, she looks over at Maya. “Have you seen Lucas since you got back?”

Lucas must not have told Riley he’s been stalking her.

“Riley,” she says, but Riley shakes her head. 

“It’s okay. We can talk about him.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she says simply, grabbing her drink from the table. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?” Riley asks, though she still seems concerned.

Maya doesn’t want to know the exact reason they broke up or if Lucas ever talked about her. They’ve barely gotten their friendship back on track. She’s going to let Lucas ruin it again.

“I saw these street drawings in Berlin,” she says quickly. “Chalk drawings, but they were, like, 3-D. They were really cool. You would have liked them.”

“I think I saw a picture,” Riley says, but she doesn’t sound all that interested. “I’m over Lucas, you know.”

Maya slumps in her chair. She really doesn’t want to know.

“It’s been a year,” Riley goes on, watching Maya closely. “We’re still friends. But he’s dated other people, and so have I.”

“You’ve dated other people?” Maya asks skeptically. Riley has to know someone for five years before actually going on a date with them.

“Yes,” Riley says simply. “I went out with a guy named Jamie. We went mini-golfing.”

Maya’s more surprised that there’s a place to mini-golf in the city than anything else.

“I’m just saying that Lucas and I are friends now. That’s it.”

Maya raises an eyebrow. “And why should that matter?”

Riley shoots her a significant glance. “I just want you to know that I’m okay with whatever happens. You have my blessing.”

Maya frowns. “I don’t need your—” She huffs. “Riley. I don’t need your blessing. Nothing is ever going to happen with Lucas.”

Riley shrugs like she knows something Maya doesn’t, though Maya doubts it. Riley has always been terrible with secrets. She can’t even keep her own.

“Sometimes things don’t work out the way you think they’re going to,” Riley says. “Sometimes people change or make a mistake or realize something they didn’t know before.”

Maya doesn’t have time to be cryptic. “What are you trying to say, Riles?”

“I know you’re still mad at Lucas because of the whole thing,” she says slowly. “But there were lots of factors involved. Things didn’t turn out how anybody thought they would. We were young and stupid and we made some decisions that were probably not very smart.”

“And we’re so much wiser two years later,” Maya says, though she thinks she knows where Riley is going with this.

“Maybe not,” Riley admits. “But we know more than we did.”

“You’re saying I should give Lucas another chance.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Riley says, and Maya laughs.

“Yeah, it could,” she says. “It could hurt just as much.” She could have to relive two years ago all over again if she opens herself up to liking Lucas, resolving to be the second choice, like she has been all her life. “Why would you want that anyway? Lucas was yours first.”

“It’s not about Lucas,” Riley says, but on Maya’s look, she backtracks. “Okay, it is a little, but I’ve known you almost my whole life, and I know that you’re not happy right now.”

“Maybe that’s because I don’t have a purpose in my life. It has nothing to do with boys.”

“It does, a little,” Riley points out, and Maya wonders when she got so smart. Must have been when she was traipsing around Belgium living off chocolate and fries and drinking raspberry beer. “I want you to be happy. I’ve always wanted you to be happy. I know you weren’t when you left, and you still aren’t. But there’s still time to fix that.”

“You know, I really don’t deserve you,” Maya says after a minute, frowning at her coffee. “I abandoned you because of some stupid boy and when I finally came back, I was a bitch about it. But you still like me.”

“What’s the point of friendship if you don’t stick through the hard parts?” Riley asks, leaning over and hugging Maya. “I know you, Maya. Better than anyone, and you know me. So I know you’ll fix this. And we’ll keep fixing us.”

Maya hugs her back this time, letting out a breath as Riley squeezes her tight.

“I really missed you, Peaches,” she says, and Riley smiles as she pulls back. 

“Me too.”

*

For the first time since she’s gotten back, Maya feels like things are okay. She and Riley are getting back to normal, or at least, moving forward, which is more than she could have hoped for a couple months ago when she stepped off the plane at JFK. She shouldn’t have stayed away so long.

The only lingering problem, aside the whole Lucas thing, is that she still doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life. She works at Starbucks. She paints in her free time. She hangs out with Farkle and Riley and sometimes Katya, who is probably the best coworker she could have gotten considering the type of people in New York.

“Do you have any tattoos?” she asks Katya between rushes at work, tossing the blender in the sink filled with water.

“A couple,” Katya says. “Why? You thinking about getting one?”

“Not really.” Maybe someday if she can figure out something she’d want on her body forever.

“You thinking about becoming a tattoo artist?” Katya asks instead. “If you are, Nick could definitely hook you up.”

“No,” Maya says. She doesn’t think that’s quite for her, at least not right now. “But I can’t work at Starbucks forever.”

Katya laughs as she grabs the whipped cream and piles it on a drink she’s making. “Sure you can. You could become a manager, then a supervisor, then a CEO.”

“Okay,” Maya corrects herself. “I don’t _want_ to work at Starbucks forever.”

“So you gotta figure out where you’re going next,” Katya says, handing the drink off to the customer. “Why didn’t you go to college?”

Maya shrugs, refilling the cup sizes by the register. “I didn’t see anything in it for me.”

“But that was two years ago,” Katya points out. “Maybe there’s more in it now.”

Maya doesn’t want to go to a regular university where she has to take classes like history and math. Those things never really interested her, no matter how hard Mr. Matthews tried to make history interesting. 

The only school that really interests her is art school and it’s not as easy as submitting a form to get accepted to those. There’s also the matter of paying for it. So many obstacles were one of the reasons she’d rejected college so thoroughly a few years ago. A few years ago, she was too scared, worried she wouldn’t make it in a place where everyone would be better than her, smarter, more talented.

The one thing she learned wandering around Europe is that there are thousands of different kinds of art, whether it’s painting, sketching, sculpture, jewelry, even writing is an art form in itself. Somewhere in there, she’d stopped caring if she was good enough, and now is her chance to prove it.

It’s still a scary thought, putting herself out there, the chance to get rejected. She’s been rejected plenty of times in her life, but this feels like more than that. Still, if she ever wants to move forward, she has to be the one to do it.

The door opens and Lucas steps in. Maya sees him first, the way he hesitates when he sees her, like he was hoping she wouldn’t be there.

“I’m just here for coffee,” he says when he reaches the counter, and Maya nods without replying.

She isn’t sure what to say to him anymore. All the anger she felt has ebbed into confusion after what Riley said. A part of her doesn’t want to give him another chance, but if she never forgives him, will she ever move on?

Katya makes his drink while Lucas avoids looking at Maya, staring at his phone and sitting down at the table furthest from the counter, his back to her. He pulls out a stack of textbooks and a notebook, scribbling things down as she watches.

Katya nudges Maya as she stands there. “Still not an ex?”

Maya ignores her, heading over to the sink and beginning to wash out the blenders. It’s a gross job, but it beats staring at Lucas and trying to figure out what he’s thinking. It nags at her, Riley’s voice, telling her to try again, like something might happen.

Maya doesn’t know what she wants to happen. Even when Lucas had picked Riley, she’d known deep down that it would always happen that way. She’d been stupid to hope otherwise. She’d been a terrible friend to hope otherwise.

But if her coming back was all about starting over, she had to start over with Lucas too, or at least, put it behind her so she can move forward.

Glancing over, Lucas is still at the table by the window, earbuds in as he writes in his notebook.

“I’m gonna take my break,” she says, unknotting her apron and tossing it in the back.

Katya appears with a muffin on a plate and hands it to her. “Don’t go over there empty-handed.”

Maya doesn’t thank her, but she takes the plate and steps out from behind the counter.

She can already feel her pulse speeding up, nervous, as she goes over to Lucas’ table.

“Muffin?” she asks when he looks up at her, confused, and pulls out an earbud. She doesn’t wait for his response and sits in the other chair. She takes a breath. She can do this. “We have ten minutes for you to tell me whatever you want to tell me.”

She’s not sure she wants to hear it, but she probably won’t get another opportunity to let this go.

When Lucas doesn’t speak, she sighs and shoves the muffin toward him. “Okay, I’ll go first. I guess I always knew you were going to pick Riley. I just let myself hope that you wouldn’t because, I don’t know, I’m a masochist? But it still hurt. It still felt like I didn’t matter to either one of you at the time. Like we’d just been biding our time pretending to be friends until you made a decision. I tried not to care, even to be happy for Riley, but it just hurt more than I expected.” Lucas is listening intently, eyebrows furrowed, but Maya presses on. She needs to get this out. “I know, logically, I shouldn’t be mad that you made a choice. It had to happen. We couldn’t go on like that forever. But I still was. I still am a little bit. Because everything changed, and it can never go back to the way it was.”

“I didn’t like the way it was,” Lucas says finally, shaking his head, and Maya bites her lip. “It was awful for me. Trying to figure out who I liked. Everyone just kept _saying_ that Riley and I were meant to be. Star-crossed lovers and destiny and, god, just so much pressure. I picked Riley because that’s who I thought I was supposed to be with. I’m not sorry I chose her because if I hadn’t, I’d always wonder, and I’d never know. I just couldn’t not try it. At least once.”

Maya nods slowly. She understands that. It doesn’t make it hurt less, but she was there. She remembers all the talk about destiny, how everyone just seemed to agree that Riley and Lucas were made for each other. She couldn’t have argued with it either.

“It’s been a year since we broke up,” Lucas says, picking at the muffin, but he doesn’t eat it. “And things are fine. We’re friends now. We’re not friends like we used to be, but it’s fine. I still made a mistake, though.”

There’s that word again. Mistake. It makes Maya’s stomach clench. Second place. As always.

Lucas picks up his pen, turning it over in his fingers. “I listened what everyone else thought. I didn’t actually listen to what I felt. If I had, maybe things would have been different.” He looks up at her, and Maya’s heart thuds against her ribcage, nervous again.

“I…” she says, unsure what to say. “My break’s almost over.”

Lucas nods like he isn’t surprised. “You’re not a consolation prize, Maya,” he says with that sad, open expression that makes Maya’s heart melt just a little. “You’re not second place.”

It’s too much to think about as Maya hesitates in getting up. After all this time, he’s telling her he likes her. It was all she wanted for years, but now she doesn’t know what to do about it.

“There’s a line, so,” she says instead, pointing vaguely to where Katya is handling the line by herself.

Lucas doesn’t reply, turning away from her at length and putting his earbuds back in. Maya grabs her apron from the back and takes the cup Katya hands her.

“Kiss and make up?” she asks as she scribbles down an order and a misspelled name.

“Not exactly,” Maya says as she grabs the caramel syrup.

*

The ducks are the same as always as Maya tosses bird seed out to them. Bread, as Riley has said many a time, is bad for ducks. So they bring bird seed and the ducks flock to them.

“It’s been a while since all three of us were together,” Farkle says, digging his hand in the bag for seed. “Reminds me of middle school.”

“Now just hit on us both and it really will,” Maya says, and Riley laughs.

“I have a girlfriend,” Farkle points out. “But you’re both still as beautiful as ever.”

“Nice save.”

“Is Isa coming home for Thanksgiving?” Riley asks as a black duck quacks loudly at her. Across the pond, the trees have lost most of their leaves and a chilly wind kicks up around them. Maya tightens her scarf.

“Should be,” Farkle says. “Your dad still planning on inviting everyone over?”

“He always does.”

Maya forgot how much she missed this, doing nothing, feeding ducks, just being together, talking about nothing important. It’s been a while.

She can’t help but be a little distracted, though, as she scattered the bird seed on the ground and the ducks crowd around her feet.

She submitted her application to art school last week. She hasn’t told anyone, not even her mom. She doesn’t want anyone to know if she doesn’t get in.

“It’s getting cold out here,” Riley says, rubbing her hands together. “Maybe it’ll snow for Thanksgiving.”

“Ugh, no, too early,” Maya says. “It’s barely been fall.”

“What did you do last year on Thanksgiving?” Farkle asks as they turn from the ducks. The bag of seed is empty, and it is getting a bit chilly, Maya has to admit.

She pauses, trying to remember. “I think I was in Austria, in that town where they filmed The Sound of Music.”

Riley gasps and her eyes get wide. “You went there _without me_?!”

“Someday,” Maya promises, throwing an arm around Riley’s shoulder. “We’re gonna go back and do everything together.”

“Run through the grass and sing _The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music_?”

“Of course,” Maya assures her. Like they would do anything else.

“Okay,” Riley agrees, pacified for now. Maya grins and gives her a squeeze.

“I promise, next time, you and me, and Farkle if he wants to come.”

“I don’t sing,” Farkle says as they wander down the pathway.

“You could still come.”

“I’ll let you two take it,” he says simply and Maya laughs.

Riley’s phone pings as they walk and she digs it out. “Sierra wants to know if we want to see a movie later,” she says, glancing at Maya carefully, but Maya’s over that. Her jealousy had been stupid and unfounded.

“I could see a movie,” she says, and Farkle shrugs.

“Sure.”

Riley smiles brightly at both of them before typing her response. Together, they walk toward the exit and hopefully somewhere warmer, but Maya doesn’t really care. She could be anywhere but as long as Riley is there, it would be fine.

*

Maya hasn’t seen Lucas since that day in Starbucks. Not that she runs into him all the time, but he hasn’t been back nor has he stalked her anywhere she’s been since then.

Honestly, she’s not sure how she feels anymore. It had been such clearcut anger for so long, resentment with both Lucas and Riley for changing things. But she’s come to realize that she can’t carry that around. She doesn’t want to carry it around anymore. She and Riley have patched things up as best they can and they’ll move forward from here.

Lucas, though. She doesn’t know what to do about him.

She keeps reliving his words over and over when she’s alone, before falling asleep, during slow moments at work, when she’s trying to concentrate on painting.

_You’re not a consolation prize._

She just doesn’t know where they go from here.

She can’t lie and say she doesn’t still have feelings for him. Because she does. She always has, and she’s tried to bury them, stomp them out. There have been other boys, other guys she’s dated and made out with and whatever else. But they were never Lucas.

It’s the possibility that freaks her out now, the possibility that it could happen. He and Riley are over and Riley has given her blessing, whatever that means.

It’s just not as easy as jumping into something, Maya thinks. They’ve been through too much to just do it. She wouldn’t know what to do.

So she doesn’t do anything. Instead, she sits in her room, working on her latest painting, and it’s too late before she realizes it’s Lucas’ face staring back at her from the canvas. It’s abstract, but it’s there. The golden hair, blue eyes, a sharpness to the painting reminiscent of his face. 

“Maya,” her mom calls from the living room as the door shuts behind her. “There’s a letter for you. From, uh, Parsons?”

Scrambling off her chair, Maya makes a beeline for the door, yanking it open and practically accosting her mother in the hallway.

“Whoa,” her mom says as Maya yanks the letter from her hand. “What’s the rush?”

Maya ignores her, turning the letter over, her hands trembling. This is it. Well, not _it_. If she doesn’t get in, there are other schools, but if she can’t get in here, where can she get in?

She’s too impatient, too nervous, to open it carefully, so she rips open the side and yanks the letter out. It’s a big envelope, and she thinks that’s a good sign. Yanking out the first paper, her eyes scan so fast, she barely reads it.

“Oh my God,” she breathes as it sinks in, the words on the page; _We’re pleased to offer you a position at Parsons New School of Design…_

“What is it?” her mom asks, trying to read over her shoulder, but Maya turns and hugs her. “Oh, okay?”

“I got in!” Maya says, almost unable to believe it. “I got in.”

“In where?” her mom asks as Maya pulls away and rereads the letter just to make sure.

“Parsons,” she says, and her heart is pounding for a good reason this time. “It’s an art school here in New York,” she says when her mom doesn’t react.

“That’s great!” she says, finally as excited as Maya. “You’re going to go to school? I knew you’d figure yourself out eventually. I’m so proud! You know what, we are going to go shopping tomorrow and get you some new clothes for a new school!”

Maya doesn’t even care that they can’t afford new clothes. She’s too happy to care. She got in to Parsons. She, her, Maya. She did something good with her life.

Her mom is rambling excitedly, and Maya lets her. For once, she lets herself be happy. She deserves it.

*

“Oh my God, you got into Parsons—that’s so amazing!” Riley screeches, her friends completely forgotten behind her and even managing to drown out the music at the party for a moment. She hugs Maya so tightly Maya can barely breathe, but she’s too happy to care. “When do you start?”

“Next semester,” Maya says when her ribs are no longer being crushed by Riley.

The party is just like the last one Maya went to with Riley except that she’s actually happy to be here this time, and she even smiled at Sierra when she arrived.

“I’m so happy for you!” Riley shouts over the music. “You’re gonna be so amazing.”

Maya grins. “Maybe I’ll even get a dorm.”

Riley’s whole face lights up. “A roommate! You’d have to get a roommate!”

Maya just laughs at Riley’s excitement. She grabs a drink that passes by on a platter and tosses it back. Tonight, she’s not drinking to make herself feel better but because she feels amazing.

Riley’s expression freezes as she turns to the door, and Maya turns too.

Lucas has just stepped in with some guy Maya doesn’t know. A new friend apparently.

She turns back to Riley even as butterflies erupt in her stomach. Things have been going so well the past couple days. She hasn’t had time to think about Lucas, about what they’re supposed to be.

“Have you talked to him?” Riley asks because of course she does.

“Yeah,” Maya says with a shrug. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Riley hesitates, glancing after Lucas, who doesn’t appear to have noticed them. “He likes you, you know.”

Frowning, Maya tilts her head to the side. “How do you know?”

“He told me.” Riley shrugs. “A couple months ago.”

Maya pauses. “Is that why you said I should give him another chance?”

“That and I hate conflict.”

Maya actually laughs. “I know, Peaches.”

“Now that you’re staying for sure,” Riley says with a nudge. “Maybe you should tell him.”

“It won’t change anything,” Maya says, but she still feels nervous as she cranes over the heads to find Lucas. He’s disappeared into the crowd.

“You’re trying new things,” Riley reminds her. “And maybe old things too. Just tell him how you feel. Please? For me?” Riley widens her eyes and Maya hates her right now.

“You really want me to do this?”

“I was in your way for way too long,” Riley says matter-of-factly. “And I didn’t even know it. Lucas and I are not meant to be. I know that now. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be. I want you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy too,” Maya reminds her, but she’s already feeling anxious.

“I am,” Riley assures her. “So. Go!”

There’s nothing for it. Maya grabs another drink as it passes, this time for fortification, as she steps into the crowd.

She doesn’t know anyone here aside from Riley and Sierra, so she pushes through the groups and keeps her eyes open for that familiar blond hair.

“Oof!” she says as someone runs into her near the tiny balcony.

“Maya.” Lucas is behind her, looking surprised to find her here. “What are you…”

Pushing her hair back, Maya finishes her drink. She’s going to do this. She’s going to put herself out there. Again. And she better not be rejected again or she’s going to murder someone.

“You remember that party,” she says and Lucas leans in slightly to hear her over the music. “Back in Senior year, at Missy Bradford’s house, and we all got tipsy on peach schnapps?” It was not her finest moment, but Lucas nods, looking confused. “And I tried to kiss you and you pushed me away?”

“Oh,” Lucas says, eyebrows furrowing. “Yeah. Yeah.”

She can’t believe she’s going to do this, but it’s been too long, and she can’t not know, not for the rest of her life. She’s tired of being angry and sad and wondering what if.

“This isn’t Missy Bradford’s house,” Maya says, “and this is not peach schnapps. I’m wondering if I tried to kiss you, if you would push me away again.”

Lucas doesn’t reply for a second, seemingly taken aback by the question. Maya had to ask first. She’s not going to make a fool of herself like she did that night.

“No,” he says finally, like the word is forcing its way off his tongue. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good to know,” she says as the weight on her chest lifts, but Lucas leans in and kisses her first.

His lips are soft, his hands gentle as they come to cradle the back of her neck, sliding into her hair, and she forgets for just a second everything that’s happened between them.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas says as he pulls away, and Maya wishes he wouldn’t. “About how everything happened.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, leaning into his touch. “I didn’t exactly handle it with class.”

“That’s just you,” Lucas says and Maya scoffs.

“What was that, Huckleberry? You’re the one who started this.”

“I can’t believe I missed you calling me that,” Lucas murmurs before he kisses her again, and Maya doesn’t care who started what.

Maya catches herself smiling when Lucas pulls away. “Alright, I forgive you, and I’m sorry too.”

“Think we should tell Riley?” Lucas asks, and Maya glances over his shoulder to where Riley is watching excitedly. Riley waves when Lucas looks too.

“I think she already knows.”

“She’s taking it much better than you did,” Lucas says, but he kisses her even as she says, “Shut up.”

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Maya lets him kiss her. Anger is a pointless emotion, she decides as the music thuds around them. From now on, she chooses to be happy, no matter what happens with Lucas or in the future. She has her best friend and she has her whole life ahead of her.

*

FIN.


End file.
